Assessment to Facilitate an Intervention Aiming at: Building the Capacity of BiH Institutions to Address Mental Health Issues amongst Defence Personnel in BiH

Assessment to Facilitate an Intervention Aiming at: Building the Capacity of BiH Institutions to Address Mental Health Issues amongst Defence Personnel in BiH

Assessment to Facilitate an Intervention Aiming at: Building the Capacity of BiH Institutions to Address Mental Health Issues amongst Defence Personnel in BiH

In the context of the planned intervention concerning the application of international models to support the Ministry of Defence in the design and implementation of a systematic response to the potential negative impacts of past and present war-related experiences on the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing discharged and active duty staff of the Ministry of Defence, and those involved in peacekeeping missions, assessments have been undertaken to precisely define the terms of the intervention, determine the roles of relevant stakeholders, identify the basic self-sustainable structures to be established within the BiH Ministry of Defence, amend and update the existing project document to be re-submitted to donors for funding. This capacity building initiative builds on ongoing discussions between IOM and BiH MoD on one side and representatives of military and non-military institutions in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

The overall objective of the project was to identify the steps required to implement a wider intervention aimed at enhancing the capacities of the MoD and the MoHs to provide a systematic response to mental health issues in current and discharged personnel of the Armed Forces of BiH, and also in relation to their participation to peacekeeping missions.